ONE Mindanao. Bangon Mindanao. My Mindanao. It’s a heart-warming call of solidarity for the survivors of the earthquake in the South of Mindanao. But how I wish we have this call for the rest of the people of Mindanao, the Lumad and the Moro people, who are ravaged by wars.
It pains me as well when we talk of Mindanao as a home, as a cradle of culture and life, yet its first inhabitants are deprived of their homes and their land.
The Manobos of Talaingod have been staying in evacuation centers and Bakwit school villages for four years. They lost not only their homes, but also their schools. The government said the schools teach the children to hold firearms. But the Manobo said their schools only armed their children with heritage, the love their ancestral land, the Pantaron Mountains that is the headwater of Davao River and Pulangi River.
Marawi is the Islamic City of Mindanao, but it is reduced to rubbles after Martial Law. Mosques and madrasahs are destroyed. Thousands of families still live in tents, deprived of work, farms and schools for two years. The city is “liberated”, yet its people cannot go back. They are told to return after two years, as government will rebuild their city.
It also pains me that Martial Law is creating a climate of control now in North Cotabato and Davao del Sur. Earthquake survivors, mostly farmers and the poor, are threatened to be arrested if they will linger along the highway begging relief workers and travelers for relief. There’s a memo from the Defense Secretary that checkpoints are going to be set to screen relief goods and only allow “authorized and legitimate” relief workers to enter the areas.
“When you ask them to surrender their goods to DSWD or LGU, the compassion will stop its flow,” a development worker, Rey Barnido of Duyog Marawi posted on his Facebook account.
One remembers how relief for other areas have ended up in stocked warehouses, or poorly constructed bunkhouses to understand the fears of citizens and aid agencies whose heart to help are stabbed as well.
In times of wars, martial law, and this time disasters, the poor are hit hardest, and sadly, they are the ones always pushed around, pushed upfront for photo ops, then pushed away and pushed to silence by government and state security forces. They do this restore their own version of security and order.
There is no other truer sense of security than the solidarity of us, Mindanoans and the rest of the Filipinos here and abroad who wish everyone is safe from calamities, natural and government-made.
That is why, when we say bangon Mindanao, one Mindanao, my Mindanao, sana all.